de Clifford, you would let me have her for a week: I have a groom who is a famous dog-doctor; he shall prescribe for her, and I'll administer all the medicines myself; and, above all, I'll promise to love and to pet her as much as you do." "Oh! that would be impossible," said she, laughing. Besides," chimed in Julia, "Prince might eat her up at a mouthful, as he did my beccaficas; and I'm sure Zoe teases her quite enough as it is, poor dog!" Lord de Clifford not making his appearance, and no message having been returned to the one sent, Lady de Clifford now rang to inquire the reason of it; the servant in waiting was despatched to Dorio, and returned with the answer that Lord de Clifford was not yet come home. "Not come home! that is impossible. Send Dorio here." Dorio came and made the same reply: the whole party looked at each other with unfeigned astonishment, and asked almost simultaneously, "Who, then, was it that went up the opposite steps a quarter of an hour ago, when you stood by the lion at the foot of them ?" "C'était l'homme d'affaire de Mademoiselle d'Antoville," replied the immoveable Dorio, twitching the ring in his right ear. "That fellow," said Saville, as he shut the door, "must have been for a long time primo buffo at the San Carlino, to tell a lie with such consummate genius and such inimitable composure." The carriage was now announced, and the two friends were obliged, "malgré eux," to take their departure. Mowbray, however, contrived to make himself happy by carrying off Tiney, and a bunch of violets that Lady de Clifford had dropped; and Saville whispered in Fanny's ear, 66 Am I to dine here to-day, dearest ?" "Why, as that is a matter of business," said she, laughing, "you must ask 'l'homme d'affaire de Mademoiselle d'Antoville!'" F 2 CHAPTER VII. "You have a head, and so has a pin." "We glide o'er these gentle waters The mysteries they have found thee Where they may aye immortal be!" MS. "L'aria e la terre a l'acqua son d'amor piene." PETRARCA. LORD DE CLIFFORD, who, among his other talents, had a wonderful turn for petty economy, had been for the last six weeks deeply absorbed in Professor Autenrieth's plan for making bread out of deal boards; he had actually got as far as the sawdust, and procured a quantity of marsh-mallow roots. Such abstruse and scientific labours required relaxation; and Mademoiselle d'Antoville, who had not found the least difficulty in persuading him that he distanced Sir Humphrey Davy in science, Tycho Brae in astronomical lore, and Bayle in general knowledge, found it equally easy to convince him that the exercise of such a monopoly of talents might be fatal, if unrelieved by the "otium cum dignitate" that should accompany them; consequently the excursion to Como was proposed by her, as one of a series to take place for that purpose. Saville drove Fanny in his phaeton, the Seymours (who were of the party) good-naturedly gave Monsieur de Rivoli a seat in their carriage, while Lady de Clifford's was occupied by herself, her sposo, Mowbray, and Mademoiselle d'Antoville, who devoted herself to appreciating Lord de Clifford. They had not got above half way, before mademoiselle began to purse up her mouth, close her drab-coloured eyes, and incline her head faintingly towards his shoulder, at which Lady de Clifford offered her" vinaigrette," intending to request she would change places with her, as she feared that sitting with her back to the horses might have occasioned her indisposition; but before she had time to utter one word, her husband seized her extended hand, and dragging her rudely from her seat, placed his grammatical inamorata in it, exclaiming, "Do you not see she is ill from sitting backward ?" "I was just going to offer Mademoiselle d'Antoville my seat," said poor Lady de Clifford, trying to suppress the tears that had come into her eyes. "Oh, you are always going," sneered her amiable lord. Mowbray, who could hardly contain his indignation at this scene, caught himself mechanically changing his place to the one beside her, which her husband had vacated to watch over Mademoiselle d'Antoville; and, throwing a shawl over her, he pressed her hand in both of his as he said, "Good heavens! I hope you won't suffer from sitting here; the wind is so much more keen than at the other side." Julia's face crimsoned as she withdrew her hand; her heart was too full for utterance; but Mowbray thought he had never, for the greatest service he had conferred on another, been so amply repaid, as when her eyes for one moment met his, as she drew the shawl he had given more closely about her. Meanwhile mademoiselle, after labouring a few minutes like a steam-engine, thought fit to open her eyes, and raising her head from Lord de Clifford's shoulder, where it had unconsciously rested, murmured, or, rather, shrieked, in a "Théâtre François' tone," "Ah, c'est toi?" to which he responded, with undeniable truth and brevity, "Oui, c'est moi!" The fair sufferer's next thought was for her dress; and carefully arranging her shawl and bonnet, which had not been in the least deranged during her feint, she exclaimed, "Ah, mon Dieu! comme je me suis abiméd" Then suddenly recollecting, that although she was Lord de Clifford's Aspasia, she was also his wife's governess, she turned to the latter to apologize for having turned her out of her place, and to beg she would retake it. “Oh, d―n it! she'll do very well where she is," said her kind and affectionate spouse, before she had time to decline mademoiselle's proffered politeness. When they reached the little inn at Como, they found the rest of the party had arrived before them, and had ordered the boats and luncheon, to which latter they were doing full justice-all, except poor Monsieur de Rivoli, who was warring with the moschetoes, and trying to make the same bargain with them that Polyphemus did with Ulysses; namely, that they would devour him the last. At length, even his " occupation was gone," and they all descended to embark upon certainly the most lovely lake in the world. Oh, the deep beauty of its silent waters, glassing on their diamond surface the fair and gemlike beauties of its sunlit margins! The wind had gone down; not a breath seemed to kiss the leaves or dimple the tide, which lay like a sleeping child beneath; it was one of those hushed and balmy days, that give a luxury to the happy by shedding over them a melancholy that is purely imaginative; that melancholy which gives a poetry to every feeling, because it springs from no harsh reality; while, to the miserable, such days seem as if Nature had returned, like a long-absent friend, to sooth and atone to them for the unkindness of Fate. The lighthearted and properous can never worship Nature with the incense of the heart-gratitude; for to them, the softest air, the brightest skies, the sweetest flowers, are but so many minor adjuncts in the gorgeous pageant of their destiny; but to the crushed heart, the burning brain, the warped and withered mind, the moral Cain who has been the fratricide of his own welfare, every look, and breath, and tone of hers comes like a good Samaritan; healing what others smote, fostering what others deserted, rescuing what others endangered, e'en the wayward and erring spirit of man, and at length leading it "through nature up to nature's God." Alas! alas! why is it that so many of us must be rejected of earth ere we can think of heaven? Why is it that religion is so often only resorted to as an elixir for worldly disappointments? why is it that we follow the example of the heathen Agrippa, who, when Augustus refused to accept of the dedication of the Pantheon, then, and not till then, consecrated it to all the gods of Olympus? What a pantheon is the human heart! rejected by one, only to be filled with innumerable still vainer idols, and at last, perhaps, in its best stage, mistaking the gorgeous and poetical pomps, the Catholicism of the passions, for the pure and undefiled Christianity of the soul! But the reason of this mistake is clear: "They will tarry by the roadside, hearing tales of the fountain, instead of repairing straight to the fountain itself, there to drink of its waters." If even the metaphysics of Aristotle are so mystified; if the peripatetic doctrines are so perverted through their commentators (including Cicero, the cleverest of them), how much more must Christianity have suffered from the same source? inasmuch as it being of a divine, and, consequently, of more simple origin, it is more easily perverted through human and complex means; and the most dangerous perversions of all are the perversions of those natures which have an innate craving after right; for then begins the self-deluding sophistry which tries to germe a wrong act with a good motive. At this state had Mowbray arrived: he had repeated to himself so often that it was only common humanity to pay Lady de Clifford every possible attention, neglected and ill-treated by her husband as she was, that, instead of trying, as he had at first done, to check his feelings of compassion towards her, he made a point of yielding to, and encouraging them on all occasions; and, after the scene in the carriage, he thought it incumbent upon him to take as much care of her as possible for the rest of the day; indeed, she had fallen to his share; Fanny and Saville having, of course, paired off; and Monsieur de Rivoli determining, what little time he could spare from smoothing the rugged path of his mustaches, and humming snatches of Sulmargine," ," "Le Suisse au bord du lac," "O Pescator," the "Biondina," and other appropriate tunes, as they call "Non nobis Domini" when it is played at a lord-mayor's feast, to devote himself to eradicating from Mrs. Seymour's mind certain ignorant prejudices, which her speech about Marie Louise gave him reason to fear she entertained. Mr. Seymour, like a true Englishman, had fastened upon Count C., and had dragged him back to Boodles and the House of Commons; while Lord de Clifford, after having first placed one of his wife's shawls under Mademoiselle d'Antoville's feet, was explaining to her (preparatory to their landing) all about Pliny the elder and Pliny the younger; while she, though expressing |